50th Day of School (part 1)

Happy 50th day to us! Well, really it was the 51st day of school. We might have rigged our calendar to make today the 50th day because we (meaning first grade teachers) were at a common core training all day yesterday (the “real” 50th day). Are you still with me? Confusing, I know but most importantly we had a peachy day today! Thank you to Susan and Karin for making it a great day.

We started today making a jukebox craft. They turned out cute. On the center of the jukebox there is a grid with rectangles, 50 to be exact. They had to make a pattern with that and then assemble their jukebox. There is a writing piece that compare the 1950’s with today, but I did not get a picture of that.

After recess, we set up 4 stations for all 3 first grade classes to rotate through. One station was hula hoops, they always love those. Although, we discovered it was tough to hula with a poodle skirt on.

The second station was tootsie roll measuring. The kids enjoyed this and it hit the standard of nonstandard measuring, woohoo!

For the next station, we borrowed a record player. We touched a scratched old records. We listened to record and fast and slow speeds. It was such a hoot to watch the kids, they were so intrigued by the records. It was great for comparing how we listen to music today.

The last station was some Roll, Graph and Do fun. My kids always love graphing.

After lunch, we had a sock hop and watched some youtube videos about life in the 1950’s. Check out my youtube channel for some things I found. Please review them for content, some of them I had to turn off at certain point.

After some dancing fun, we needed a treat. So we made some root beer floats. It’s interesting how some kids don’t like root beer because of the carbonation.

So as you can imagine, I am exhausted. You may have also noticed that the title of this post says part 1. I will share more soon, but this post was quite long so I will end it for now. If you are interested in any of these activities, please check out my Nifty Fifties Pack.

What is all of the buzz about bees? A lot! Bees are so important for our ecosystem but unfortunately some species are endangered. Kids are usually so curious about bugs, so you have instant engagement when you talk about bees! I like to teach the importance of them, and talk about ways we can help them out. There are so many great bee resources out there for teaching these insects and other pollinators. [ 442 more words ]

We had polar animal adventure day in first grade last week. Polar animal adventure day is a theme day we have as a culminating activity for your polar animal unit. We set up six stations and rotated the first graders through them. Each station was about 15 minutes long. Here are the stations we had….